3 He's like how I used to be.

The first thing she sees is the light.

It's not at all like she thought it would be. The sun is high in the sky and so bright. It casts a glow on everything it touches, setting it alight. It's nothing at all like how it is indoors, where everything was in the shade. Outside it's so bright it's nearly blinding.

And then there is the space. Her door opens to a cobblestone street lined with patches of flowers and tufts of grass – and all around her, there is space. Above and on each side – it's so much bigger outside than it is in her store. Of course it would be – she knew it would be. But knowing and experiencing are two very different things. The open space above carries on forever and it's enough to make her a little dizzy.

Careful, Madeline steps away from the door, and then looks behind her. It's something she's never thought of before, but now that she has the opportunity, she's almost desperate to see what her store looks like from the outside. What is it that draws the warriors in?

From outside her store isn't that different from how it is from the inside, really. It's wooden and somehow cosy looking, with murky windows and wooden window frames. Above the front door hangs a wooden sign with simplistic potion painted on it in green, and nothing else. It matches the picture carved on the door. Her store doesn't seem to have a name.

There is a sound of sudden running steps and turning around quickly Madeline watches how a warrior – a man with long white hair and staff at his back – dashes down the street. He's running at incredible pace and he passes her by without so much as a glance at her direction, continuing on without a pause and vanishing behind another building at the bend of the road.

Warriors. Always in hurry.

The street slants slightly upwards, lined on each side with buildings much like hers. They're all small and wooden, with blurry windows, and rooftops lined with dark wood shingles. Not all of them have signs – most of them don't, in fact. The few signs there are resemble hers, simple wooden plates with simplified images painted on them. And they always match the ones carved on their doors.

Curious, Madeline turns to the store that sits across from hers, the one she's stared through the window many times and known nothing about. It too has a sign – a simplistic sword standing upright. So… if the sign indicates what is sold inside like her store does, then…a weapons store? Is it where people buy their swords, bows and staffs?

Hesitating for a moment, Madeline glances over her shoulder at her own store. Then she squares her shoulders, and steps away from it and to the street. Hesitance at first. And then, a little more confidently with every step, she walks over the cobblestone street and to the other side.

The weapons store is and isn't much like hers. It's all wood, rather small and quite cosy inside. Of course, there are no potions on display. Instead there are swords, shields and spears, with a couple of bows sitting on the table in the middle, and on the wall on a rack there are number of staffs.

She wonders where the warriors got their weapons, as none of the ones in the store look much like the swords, bows and staffs she has seen. These are different – some of the swords are much bigger, their hilt designs varying – some of them are smaller. There are even few with blades so slender they look like needles. The bows are much more impressive than the ones warriors usually carry, with complicated designs along the length of the wood, and the arrows laid beside them have special, colourful fletching she has never seen. And the staffs are even more different – nothing like the simple wooden staves warriors have. No, these ones are from different types of wood and they're carefully carved and polished – one of them even has a glowing gem set into it, sitting in a basket carved into the wood.

"Welcome to Shining Weapons!" the sales person greets her. It's a man with dark skin and eyes, his head completely bald. He has a nice, welcoming smile – and he doesn't wear a leather jacket like warriors do. He has a leather apron (this is new!) with soot and burn marks on it, but underneath it he has a cloth tunic and trousers, both of them little burn marked.

"Hello," Madeline says hesitantly, looking him up and down, not sure at all about what to do. The curiosity she had about the shop across from hers had been an idle feeling, one she hadn't though she'd ever actually satisfy. Now that she's here, she isn't sure what to do, what to say. She isn't a warrior, she isn't interested in weapons. All she wanted to do was…

Talk to someone.

"My name is Madeline," she says, and steps forward carefully. "I'm from the store across the street. I sell potions."

He doesn't answer, just smiles at her welcomingly and… blankly, somehow. He's not quite looking at her either, she realises. It's more like he's staring at the air just between them – staring at nothing.

"Hello?" Madeline asks, and steps closer. Slowly she waves a hand over his face, over his eyes – and he doesn't react in any way. It's as if he doesn't really see her. Or like… he doesn't care at all what he is seeing.

So. He's like she was, before she… wasn't like that anymore.

A little dismayed, Madeline looks down at the counter between her and the weapons seller – so much like the counter of her store, wooden and firm under the hand. She leans a little on it and looks around the shop, taking in the similarities and the differences. Do warriors ever try to take the weapons on display? Can they?

Can she?

Thoughtful, she reaches out to the nearest one – table with the bows on display. The wood feels solid under her hand, solid and real, and as she wraps her fingers around it and pulls, it comes loose without much resistance, sending her reeling back a bit. Lifting the bow, she turns it in her hand, wondering not just about it – but her own, reoccurring reservation about picking things up. Why does it feel like things come loose when she touches them? They aren't actually affixed to anything. Are they?

"I think… I shouldn't be able to lift this," she says to the weapons seller, turning to him. "Does it ever feel to you, like the world is… glued together? Like things are stuck and nothing is supposed to move?"

He doesn't answer – just stares at the air between them – and shaking her head Madeline turns her attention to the bow. She doesn't know much about weapons, but she knows how bows approximately works. She has a vague impression that there had been a warrior with a bow in her store once, trying to shoot the bottles on the shelves. She's fairly sure they never managed to do any damage to anything in the store, though.

Wrapping her fingers tighter around the bow's middle, she lifts it and then pulls at the string. The bow resists her strongly and she can't pull the string back much – but she can pull it back little. When she releases it, it twangs in the otherwise silent show loudly. It's a real bow, then.

"Do you sell a bow like this?" she asks curiously, turning to the weapon's seller. He doesn't react. And with an uneasy little frown, she tries again. "I uh… I want to shop?"

"These are all the wares I have available," he answers automatically, and a transfer screen opens in front of him just over the counter – and it's not hers.

A little wide eyed, Madeline sets the bow down and then looks over the list in fascination. Instead of potions, there are weapons listed on the screen. Not only swords, bows and staffs, but daggers, axes, shields, scythes, spears, hammers, and other things, all of them quite splendid to look at. And the prices. The things the weapons seller has listed on his transfer screen are a bit more expensive than the wares she usually sold – even the cheapest sword has the price of twenty silver.

What made a sword generally more expensive than a potion? Where did the prices come from anyway – what set them? She certainly didn't. "I suppose potions are cheaper because they're consumable," Madeline muses, leaning onto the wooden counter. Then she looks over the transfer screen at the weapons seller.

He's still smiling at her, his face utterly void of any real emotion. She knows that smile well – it's just like her own smile.

"You… don't really know I'm here at all, do you? You're just a…" Madeline looks for a word and shakes her head. She doesn't know what to call it – a void of… interest maybe. Void of feeling. Void of consciousness. "Why aren't you like me? Why am I not like you?"

He doesn't say anything and with a sigh she looks back at the screen between them, wondering if she can take things out of it the same way she can take things out of her own transfer screen. She doesn't test it – she wouldn't want anyone testing something like that on her, and though the weapons seller isn't… like her, she still doesn't want to do something like that to him.

Is her screen even there anymore – or is it back at the store? Turning away, Madeline tries to open it – and it appears, just as it always does, listing twenty-two different potions and their prices. So, she is a sales person even outside her store, then.

"I wonder if there are other sales people in Algiore," she says to the weapons seller. "Do you know?" he doesn't answer and with a shake of her head she closes her transfer screen. "I think I'll go and see. Try to talk to someone outside. There's a lot of people outside. And… I'll be back, later." The weapons seller doesn't answer and with a sigh, Madeline nods at him. "I'm done shopping," she says.

"Thank you for visiting, please come again!" the weapons seller says, automatic and cheerful.

Madeline's shoulders slump a little. "Yeah. Maybe… maybe we could talk, then," she says. "Thank you. This has been… different," she adds and then leaves without looking back.